On "Indian Justice"

Abstract

In 1908 a Mescalero Apache who had killed a white man was tracked down and killed by an all-Mescalero posse. The crime of the fugitive and the behavior of his pursuers do not reflect some crossculturally inexplicable, specificaliy “Indian justice”, as various published comments have suggested. The Indian justice involved has to do with the precautions taken by the Indian leaders to discourage the development of an intra-community feud on the basis of the execution.